Tribe TV goes high-def

If nothing else, the Cleveland Indians team-owned television network, SportsTime Ohio, should present an interesting mix of old and new when it makes its debut on March 12.
Details about the network, including its name and broadcast personalities, were announced Thursday in a press conference at the Jacobs Field Terrace Club.
Carrying the old-school banner will be the familiar broadcasting trio of Mike Hegan, Rick Manning and John Sanders. New to the team this year is WKYC-TV, Channel 3, sports director Jim Donovan, who will do pre-game features and other programming.
Another throwback will be the return of Indians baseball to broadcast television, with WKYC airing 20 games during the season. The station is partnering with the Indians by serving as the networks production company, providing studio space, equipment and personnel.
It eliminates the middleman as far as the teams ability to speak to the fans, said Jim Liberatore, president of Fastball Sports Productions, the team-owned company running the network. The thing Im most excited about is the ability to react to things as they happen during the season.
He also mentioned other local sports-related programming in the works, like collecting bits of road-game radio broadcasts to share with Cleveland fans, and coverage of some high school and college sports.
On the new side, 83 Indians games  including the 20 broadcast by WKYC  will be aired in high-definition television, and there will be 10 cameras covering each contest. The network will have a total of 158 games during the season.
WKYC general manager Brooke Spectorsky said bringing the Indians back to broadcast television was a big factor in the hookup with Fastball.
I always was critical of them doing cable-only (games), he said. You lose a lot of fans. You have to get to casual viewers.
Fastball has already inked a deal with Time Warner Cable, but negotiations are ongoing with other cable and satellite providers.
Mr. Liberatore admitted the network just sent out its information within the last few weeks, but he expects the majority of deals to be in place by the time the network broadcasts its first Indians spring training game, a tape-delayed spring-training contest against the New York Yankees on March 12.
Still, Bob Lau, a representative of New York-based Insight Communications, which operates cable companies in central Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky, called Fastballs price demands very difficult to rationalize and deal with for our entire customer base.